Mad for horror

Tuesday

Oct 30, 2007 at 6:00 AMOct 30, 2007 at 8:56 AM

By Craig S. Semon TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

It sounds like it has all the makings of a creature double-feature — “The House of Poe” and “The House of Wax” (in 3-D). But, in fact, it’s a way of life for two serious collectors. While one is into “movie paper” and the other’s into “wax and latex,” for Freddie Poe and Mac McDermott, horror isn’t something sick. On the contrary, horror takes them back to the wholesome innocence of their youth and reconnects them with dearly departed family members.

To accommodate all his frightful finds, Freddie Poe has turned his Worcester home into the “House of Poe,” seven rooms dedicated to monsters, ghouls and things that go bump in the night.

Not only is he a horror collector, Mr. Poe, who turns 52 on Halloween, is a horror connoisseur. He writes a monthly column for Movie Collectors World magazine called “How to Collect a Monster,” a tongue-in-cheek homage to the film “How to Make a Monster.” He even took his nom de plume of Dr. Vollin from a character Bela Lugosi played in “The Raven.”

When he is not critiquing or collecting horror film memorabilia, Mr. Poe is a boxing coach at the North End Gym in Oxford.

“A hobby is not supposed to fill the time; it’s supposed to pass the time. Norman Bates said that,” Mr. Poe insisted, referring to the character from “Psycho.”

His vast collection reaches back to the silent films era up to 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead.” More than 400 framed items hang on his walls. Overall, Mr. Poe estimates that he has thousands of lobby cards once displayed in theaters, hundreds of movie posters, hundreds of movie stills and plenty of “’60s monster toys.”

Besides filling him with a sense of nostalgia, Mr. Poe said his macabre shrine is actually a loving tribute to his mother, Emma, who died in 1994.

“I think if she saw this today, she would be frigging impressed,” Mr. Poe said with a momentary prayer. “As early as I can remember, my mother was a big movie fan and she used to emulate all the movie actresses and stuff. And she was always watching movies, always watching movies.”

At the impressionable age of 4, Freddie and his mother watched the “Shock Theater” presentation of “Frankenstein” on television. From there, everything for him was monsters.

In a time when doctors still made house calls, Freddie’s mother asked the family physician, Dr. Arthur Haddad, if it was bad that little Freddie was so into monsters. It turns out Dr. Haddad’s brother-in-law was John Zacherley, the host of “Shock Theater.” Not only did the doctor say “monsters are good for you,” he encouraged young Freddie’s obsession by giving him a “Passport to Transylvania,”a gimmick of the Zacherley fan club, and a signed 8-by-10 photograph of the horror host.

“That was it,” Mr. Poe exclaimed. “After that, I just was hell-bent on horror.”

When he was a North High School student in the early 1970s, Mr. Poe bought his first black-and-white horror movie still (Lon Chaney Jr. in “Dead Man’s Eyes”) at the former Ephraim’s Bookstores in downtown Worcester. He bought other “movie paper” — essentially anything movie-related that is on paper — from collector Blackie Seymour, who used to live on Belmont Street.

Emma Poe, an avid bingo player, used to tell young Freddie that if he was good, she would give him half her winnings. And, it turned out, Freddie was very good and, when it came to bingo, his mother was very, very lucky.

“She would come back home with $500 and whip $250 at me,” Mr. Poe recalled. “I’d march right up to Blackie’s and start buying lobby cards, three sheets, and it was all cheap back then. With $250, I was getting a lot of stuff. I was building up a good collection with that money and that went on for quite a few years.”

Besides his extensive movie paper collection, Mr. Poe has transformed his muscular arms — through tattoos — into flesh and blood lobby cards dedicated to his horror heroes. More than 30 are represented in living color, including King Kong, the Werewolf of London, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

When he dies, Mr. Poe said he hopes to sell, even donate his skin to a collector. A fan of “good clean scares,” Mr. Poe said the reason he’s a “classic horror purest” is that he doesn’t think today’s crop of blood-and-guts slasher films are particularly entertaining nor are they any good for a young person’s psyche.

“There’s enough horror in the world without having to look at stuff like that,” Mr. Poe said. “I’d rather watch a black ’n’ white oldie, even silent, no blood and no gore and no killing. I just prefer it. I just don’t like violence.”